All Divisions Healed

Colossians 3:1-11

18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 1^st August 2010/ Sacrament of Holy Communion

            I would love to have seen the reaction of First Church, Colossae, when they heard this, when the Colossians heard Paul say that even Scythians should be welcomed into their worship.  The reference comes in 3:11. Paul shows a new future where old divisions are healed and cultural distinctions removed.  In the renewal of the world, with our minds set on Christ, with our lives participating in Christ something new will emerge.  Paul describes a new kind of community – the church – where “there is no longer Greek or Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all in all (3:11).” This verse is very similar to what we find in Galatians 3:28; except there Paul says, “there is no longer male or female.”  Here in Colossae we have barbarians and, what is worse, Scythians thrown into the mix – what a church that must have been.

            What’s a barbarian?  Originally, a barbarian meant anyone who wasn’t Greek.  It’s obviously a pejorative term. It’s never used in praise.  You never hear someone affirming, “You’re such a great barbarian!” From a Greek point of view there were only two groups of people in the world, Greek and barbarian, and barbarian clearly “conveyed contempt for inferior peoples.”[1]  The term literally meant someone who talks funny, or is inarticulate, who speaks a language you cannot understand (because they’re not speaking Greek!), whose speech is unintelligible (because they’re not speaking Greek!).  The Greek word here, barbaros, refers to bar-bar, a kind random hubbub produced by hearing a spoken language that one cannot understand, similar to blah blah and babble in modern English. We could call them blahblahrians.  The definition of the other as barbarian is from the exclusive position of the Greek who divides up the world from the arrogance of the Greek perspective.  They would say there are people “like us,” and then there’s all the rest and all the rest don’t matter.  If it sounds like the Greeks had a superiority complex, they did.  Plutarch (c. 46-120), the first-century moralist, wrote that Greeks should rule barbarians.  Plato (429–347 BC) gave thanks that “he was born a Greek and not a barbarian and human rather than a creature without reason (an animal).”[2]  The Greek adopted an exclusivist perspective and then stigmatized everyone who wasn’t like them.

            Among the barbarians the most contemptible of all, the lowest of the low, again from the “superior” view of the Greeks, were the Scythians.  Who were they?  The Scythian state emerged around the 7^th century BC, with their kingdom stretching from just north of the Black Sea (modern southern Russia and Ukraine) east across central Asia, through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.  This ethnic group came out of the heart of Iran, of Persian descent. The Jewish historian, Josephus (37-c. 100), writing just after Jesus, claimed that the Scythians were descended from Magog, the grandson of Noah.  Josephus describes them “little better than wild beasts.”[3] That’s who Paul expects to be on the membership rolls of First Church, Colossae.  Even the Scythians have a place at the table. 

            How did Paul come to say this?  How did he come to believe this?  Paul had a different view of reality.  It was not the reality he naturally grew up with; it was not shaped by the religious and cultural norms of his community; it was not shaped by the tradition of his household.  There was a time when he viewed the world from the superiority of his own perspective.  There were people like him, Jewish, and then all the rest.  That’s what Gentile means, literally, “the nations,” meaning everyone else.  For him either one was circumcised or uncircumcised, that’s how the world was divided up.  There were other divisions for him too, either male or female, with male being vastly superior to being female.  He also lived within a Roman culture that divided up the world between slave and free.  That was his world; that was his reality that shaped his ethics, the way he moved in the world. It’s what he knew and he assumed he was right, standing firmly in his convictions.  That was until Jesus knocked Paul off his high-horse, threw him, literally, to the ground and blinded him, never again to “see” reality from his limited perspective (Acts 9:1-9).  In time Paul got his sight back, although nothing looked the same, he was given new eyes, new insight into the nature of another reality defined by his new relationship with the Risen Christ.

            Paul was transformed and given a new identity, rooted not in his religious, social, or ethnic identities, but in whom he came to know himself to be in Christ.  The fact that Paul can say that all these traditional, religious, social, and ethnic divisions mean nothing and can therefore be set aside (or “put to death,” as he says), is because he came to see his identity rooted in something far more profound.  These really are extraordinary claims for us to hear from Paul.  I stand amazed by his boldness of vision, how radical and subversive they were for his time (and ours).  In his vision every wall of division is obliterated and every distinction based on perspectives of superiority-inferiority, of exclusion-inclusion that defined the Greco-Roman-Jewish mean nothing in the church of Jesus Christ.  He could imagine a new world for the church, for what the true church should be about, not because he had a good idea and thought this would be a good evangelism gimmick to get people to join.  It was the reality he was compelled to live into because he had already received a glimpse of it in the way Jesus Christ treated him, in the way Paul – a violent persecutor of Jesus’ followers – could be thrown into a new reality of Christ’s grace and freedom.  He was welcomed into a new world.

            That new reality for Paul didn’t involve trying to imitate Jesus.  That was impossible.  Instead, for Paul, to be a disciple is to participate in the very life of Christ – the life, the death, and the resurrection.  It’s right there at 3:1:  “So, if you have been raised with Christ,” with the implication here being that we have – “since” we have been raised.  Actually, the Greek here is since you have been co-resurrected with Christ, then “seek the things that are above.”  Now, this does not mean, keep your head in the clouds.  It means allow your minds (the core of your being), to be shaped and defined from this new perspective we are being given in Christ.  “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (3:3).”  This, too, is participation language.  Can you hear it?  “For you have died” – already.  From Paul’s perspective, we have already died and now live on the other side of death as resurrection people.  Our lives are hidden with Christ in God, now – not in some far-off afterlife –  already; which means that we are already participating in the new reality of resurrection.  Since we have and are putting on a new life in Christ, forever discovering what it means to participate in this new reality, we are then putting off the old life, the former person, the old way of doing things, the old way of viewing things.

            Taking on and putting off.  Taking off and putting on.  Rising and dying.  Dying and rising.  Sounds like baptism language, doesn’t it?  Baptism in the early church consisted of taking off one’s garments, going naked down into a pool, and then coming up and out, rising up to new life and given a new garment.  Actually, Colossians 3 could have been a baptism text.   Baptism is not so much about initiation into the church for Paul as it’s about participation in the very life of Christ.  For the one baptized all of reality has been and is being transfigured and transformed.  Everything has changed and is changing.  It’s this reality that allowed the early church to become a new kind of community, a community of equals who gathered around one table of the Lord.[4]

            That’s the vision Paul holds out for us; this is what the church should be about.  Yet, we know all too well that the history of the church, even its contemporary incarnation, is rife with divisions.  The church and our nation continue to wrestle with divisions of all kinds, many of which are based on race.  The church and our nation continue to struggle with racism of all forms.  The national conversation about immigration, particularly in Arizona, is full of this language – who is in, who is out, who belongs and who doesn’t. Racial profiling and other forms of racism involve perspective, what we see and don’t see in the other before us.  Do we see the other, whoever the other happens to be in our midst, as stranger, as threat, as barbarian, Scythian?  If they are not “like us” are they then shunned?  Or when we look out to the other – whoever the other is – do we see a baptized child of God, a fellow brother or sister in Christ, a fellow human being created in the image of God?  Now, you won’t hear these questions in The Baltimore Sun paper. Not because there’s something wrong with The Sun.  They’re just part of a secular press.  These are not their questions.  But these are our questions.  When we see the other, what do we see?  Whom do we see?  We see the world from a different perspective, a different reality.  At least we ought to.  Sometimes we don’t.

            In Alice Walker’s short story “The Welcome Table” she tells of an old Africa American woman, tired and thirsty, entering the vestibule of a white church.  “Some of them there at the church saw the age, the dotage, the missing buttons down the front of her mildewed black dress.  Others saw cooks, chauffeurs, maids…Many of them saw jungle orgies in an evil place, where others were reminded of riotous anarchists looting and raping in the street.”  And so the hierarchy of the church mobilizes in defense of the racism of the congregation. [Leading the way was the pastor.] “The reverend of the church stopped her pleasantly as she stepped into the vestibule…. ‘Auntie, you know this is not your church?’ As if one could choose the wrong one.”  [Later,] out on the hot highway, dying as her heart gives out, she sees Jesus walking down the road and tells him, “how they had tossed her out of his church.”[5]  Truth is that kind of church is not his church; it’s a club.

            I don’t think Paul was so naïve to think that the kingdom had dawned in his churches because they were all a mess (that’s why he wrote all those letters!), but he had a vision of what the church can be like when it claims its baptismal identity, when the baptized community participates more profoundly and deeply in the very life of Christ who continually seeks to renew us and give us life.  When we do we are welcomed into a new reality. 

            We come to the Lord’s Table this morning as equals.  The Table changes how we see one another.  How we see one another is informed by this meal.  How?  Because we do more here than just “remember” what Jesus did, here we participate in the body and blood of Christ, with him and in him, in the way of life and the way of death and the way of new life that changes the perspective of everything.  Here we can see the Scythian as our brother and sister in Christ, as one baptized and equal to us, and welcomed with the embrace of peace.  May it be so. 

           

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[1] Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians & Philemon (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2005), 79

[2] Plutarch, Politics 1.2; Plato, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Thales, both cited in Thompson, 79.  Also according to Diogenes Laertius (third century AD), Socrates was grateful to Fortune that “I was born a human being and not one of the brutes; next, that I was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.”   Lives, cited in Thompson, 79.

[3] Josephus, Against Apion 2.269, cited in Thompson, 79. Emphasis added.

[4] Cf. quote from the worship bulletin:  “If the church of the baptized should be a community of a new kind of liberty, so the church that gathers around the Lord’s Table ought to form a community of a new kind of equality.”  William Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God:  Christ, Theology, and Scripture (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 151.

[5] Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, as summarized in Placher, 154.

Image:  Mystical Supper, Russian icon, 1497.

Prayer 101: Ask. Seek. Knock.

Luke 11: 1-13
17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 25^th July 2010

It’s probably the one issue people of faith struggle with most:  prayer.  In many surveys over the years here at CPC, the adult education committee almost always receives requests to do a workshop or offer a seminar on prayer.  The PrayerFest we offered last spring flowed from those requests.  The PrayerFest was a great success.  We had a great response; received good feedback; and we were told to do it again.  One thing most noticeable about the event was that there were mostly women in attendance.  I’m not sure what this says about the prayer life of men, because I know men do indeed pray – actually, we need a lot of prayer.  Maybe some guys are just reluctant to admit they need help.

            I’ll confess, though.  I’ll put myself in that category.  I need help.  When I hear the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray,” I can resonate with that.  I need help.   I pray, but I wouldn’t call myself a “prayer warrior.” I know people who can spend hours at intercessory prayer, praying over every aspect of their lives.  I don’t do that.   I pray and know the power of prayer.  Prayer changes things.  It makes a difference in my life.  And, according to Jesus, our praying has the capacity to change the world.  I pray regularly, but I don’t have a pattern or rhythm or a set-schedule.  I know people who go into their “prayer closets,” a special place to pray with God.  I don’t have such a place.  I have shelves of prayer books, books on the theology of prayer, spirituality of prayer, you name it, but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert.  Many of these books were purchased during a season in my life when I said, “I need to deepen my prayer life,” and then the rest of life gets in the way of my plans, the half-read book is placed on the shelf until the season comes around when I say, “I need to deepen my prayer life,” and I buy another book.  It’s a great way to build a library!  But it’s a lousy way to learn how to pray.

            In the schoolhouse of prayer, we’re all students, we’re all disciples, and we all have much to learn.  But, I’m beginning to be a little suspicious of all the books about prayer on the market these days, books about the secrets of prayer, books on the techniques and methods of prayers, or yet another collection of someone else’s prayers.[1]  Jesus didn’t need prayer manuals or prayers written by others.  Jesus – prayed.  He didn’t learn about prayer, he prayed.  He didn’t worry about deepening his prayer life, he prayed.  He got on with it.  For Jesus, prayer wasn’t an option; it wasn’t something he got around to after the end of a busy day or something he turned to in a time of crsis.  My guess is he never went very long between prayers; it was a constant in his life.  In Mark’s gospel, in particularly, there is a clear rhythm of prayer and minister, prayer and ministry, throughout his life.  Jesus  prayed.  He just did it.  A lot.  His disciples knew he prayed, for he was forever going off by himself to pray.  They knew how central it was in his life, in his ministry.  They didn’t know how to do it.  So one day they asked him.  And he told them – tells us.  This is how you pray….

            “When you pray, say:  ‘Father, hallowed be your name…’”   We know how the rest goes. We pray these words every week in worship.  “Every day, in countless languages, in public and private, in virtually every country of the world, this prayer ascends to God.  It could be argued that no single minute passes when it is not being uttered.”[2]  Yet, it’s used so often and it’s so well-known (like Psalm 23 or 1 Corinthians 13), that we might say the words or hear them said without really connecting with what they say, without really hearing them.  It’s so easy to miss what’s contained in this prayer, the only prayer we have from Jesus. For example, try praying the Lord’s Prayer some time, whether here in worship or at home, being attentive to every word.   Concentrating on the meaning of every word, see if you can get through the prayer without being distracted, without having a wayward thought (such as, I wonder what I’m going to have for lunch?) or any other association.  It’s not easy.

            What Jesus gives us in his prayer is both simple and profound at the same time.  He shows us that, on the one hand, the structure of prayer is not really all that complex.  The “how” of prayer is really very simple.   There are two accounts of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament, Matthews’s version and Luke’s version.  Both authors are quoting from an earlier source biblical scholars call “Q,” for the German word, Quelle, meaning, “Source.”  Matthew’s version is wordier than Luke’s.  His version of the Lord’s Prayer consists of seven imperatives or demands of God (they’re more than petitions).  Luke’s is simpler; there are only five imperatives.  Let’s look at Luke.

            After the address to God as Father, suggesting an extraordinary intimacy between Jesus and God, Jesus makes five imperatives that are amazingly comprehensive and far-reaching.  That’s how we start in prayer as well, in our address to God.  The kind of relationship Jesus had with God, as son to Father, is the same kind of relationship with all of God’s children.  We are all son’s and daughter’s of God who can be assured of a similar kind of human-divine relationship.   With just one word, “Father,” Jesus echoes his use of the Aramaic, “Abba,” Daddy, for God, signifying an extraordinary intimacy.   Suggesting level of closeness between humanity and God was unheard of in First Century Judaism.

            And notice, Jesus “didn’t respond by suggesting some technique or regimen.  He said that genuine prayer depends upon knowing the character of God rather than human effort.” [3] Knowing God as Father (the best, possible Father), as kind and benevolent parent, as Daddy then shapes the way we pray (and we can push this, I believe, to include Mommy, because the point is parental trust).  How we view God, our own personal images of God, have considerable power over how pray and when. 

            Then pray this way:  Imperative 1:  Hallow the name of God.  Sanctify the name.  Remember to set the name of God above and apart of all names.  It declares God’s absolute difference from all created things, God’s otherness.   The sense of this imperative is:  God show up!  God be holy!  God be God!  Remember who you are! 

            Imperative 2:  Ask for the kingdom.  “God, bring the kingdom.  Bring the rule of God into the world of humans.”  The term “kingdom” is used 123 times in the four Gospels.  It’s at the heart of Jesus’ ministry.  He was unique among his peers to see that the kingdom represents God’s rule of love and justice not in some far-off distance, but in the present.  In many ways, this imperative sets the tone for all the others; it establishes the horizon or purpose of every prayer uttered to God, that God’s kingdom of love, healing, justice come and be real among us.  That was the core teaching of Jesus’ ministry.  Every healing Jesus offered, every teaching, every parable points to the importance of God’s kingdom. Even the way we understand the cross and resurrection must be seen in light of the central of the kingdom of God.  Although there’s no petition for God’s will to be done here, “on earth as it is in heaven,” as we find in Matthew’s version, it’s implied in this simple request:  “Your kingdom come.”

            Imperative 3:  Give us each day our daily bread.  It’s a challenge to make sense of this, to be honest, because there’s a Greek word [epiousion from epiousios] Luke uses which in the vast body of Greek literature available to scholars today is only found here.  It means more than: may there be food on the table or may we have a well-stocked refrigerator or freezer.  It could be translated, “daily” bread, “future” bread, or “necessary” bread.  But perhaps the best understanding suggests “the bread we need.”[4]  This is not a request for God to help us live a simpler life and reduce our caloric intake. Instead, it suggests a plea that God remind us that the future is not in our hands, that so much of our lives are beyond our control; that sometimes we have to trust that indeed the Lord will provide, that we have to count on the hospitality of strangers in order to find the food we need to survive.  It’s to live knowing that the things we most need come from God and not from amassing our own resources.

            Here, perhaps, is a good illustration of this.  A year ago at this time there was an article in The Washington Post about six Franciscan friars, dressed in their long, brown robes and sandals, who made the trek from their abbey near Roanoke, Virginia, to Washington, DC, more than 300 miles.  They didn’t have a plan, they didn’t have any money.  For six weeks they walked relying on the providence of God and the kindness of strangers to feed and shelter them.  Each day they didn’t know where they were going to spend the next night.  Each morning they didn’t know where the next meal was going to come from.  The people they met responded with considerable curiosity (and suspicion) and a lot of generosity.  People pressed dollar bills into their hands, provided shelter.  One mother of three saw them walking along Lee Highway in Fairfax, so she pulled over her minivan and offered to buy them lunch at Chick-fil-A.   Everyone was staring at them, the brothers said.  “The high point was when the guy dressed up like a cow came out and gave us all high fives.  He was in costume. They were in robes.  A lot of people were wondering what was going on.”[5]  They were living out the meaning of “give us this day our daily bread.”  Living this way makes us odd. When we get glimpse of the oddness of the kingdom, people often wonder what is going on, because it makes no sense.  Yet, from the perspective of most kingdom living is odd.

            Imperative 4 is simple.  Forgive.   The gospel is all about forgiveness.  Demand forgiveness of God, because forgiveness is the way of the kingdom.  Then we demand God to help us forgive those who are indebted to us, either because of the wrong we have done them or they, us. 

            Imperative 5 is probably the most confusing.  We say, using Matthew’s versions, “Lead us not into temptation,” and probably think this means protect us from the temptation of Satan.  Here, the term is not “temptation,” but “trial,” or literally, “testing.”  What trial?  What testing?   The trying of followers of Jesus who are up against a world of injustice and cruelty, who are up against a world of people who do not seek first the kingdom, who resist the kingdom, who can’t stand the kingdom, who can’t stand justice and peace, love and forgiveness and will do whatever it takes to thwart the work of God.  The testing refers to Christians who are tested, put to the test because of their trust in God by people who are not receptive to kingdom ways.  Jesus assumes here that this imperative is needed because to be his follower means we will experience hardship, persecution, peril, and maybe even, for some, the sword.   This imperative is saying – God, give us the power to endure, to thrive, to not fail the test, but be equal to the challenges facing the struggle for the kingdom that is coming.

            Simple, right?  The structure is pretty simple.  The implications of such a prayer are radical and even revolutionary.  To pray for God’s kingdom is perhaps the most radical part of this prayer, for us and for the world. We we utter these words we are being drawn into the work of the kingdom. We are being incorporated into the very life and work of God.  That’s why Karl Barth (1886-1968) could say, “To claps the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”

            And then Jesus says, keep doing it over and over and over again.  Never give up.  If parents who are evil (Lk 11:13) – as Jesus says – can still give good things to their children, then how much more will God, who is not evil, be more parent-like in providing for the needs of God’s children?  By calling parents evil and then comparing them to God’s benevolence might sound hard, but this is actually a rabbinic and Greek rhetoric device (qal wehomer, meaning “from the lesser to the greater”), comparing from less to more, with an emphasis on the more.  In this case, the emphasis is on the nature of God. The point here is:  there’s no malice or trickery in God.  There’s no deception.  God’s trustworthy; worthy of our trust, the one we can trust with the worth of our lives, our hearts, and passions.  And the more we pray, the more we realize who God really is.

            That’s why we are told to ask, to seek, to knock again and again – to request, to search, to hunt, to pound on heaven’s door demanding of God these very things.  Biblical scholar Walter Wink says, “Biblical prayer is impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous.  It is more like haggling in an outdoor bazaar than the polite monologues of the churches.”[6]  

            That’s why Jesus tells us to ask, to seek, to knock, go after the very things that God wants.  It’s about struggle, wrestling with God, over and over again, engaging God in a profoundly personal, passionate, potentially transforming way.  For what we ask for –if we ask, not for anything we might desire, but to ask for these things – such as the kingdom, forgiveness, daily bread – they will be given.  For the kingdom has come and is on its way.  What we search for – if we search after these things that matter most to God – we will indeed find.  And when we knock away on a closed door, if that door is the threshold into the wider kingdom of God – it will open.    And it’s clear that God wants us to ask, and search, and bang away at prayer.  Gregory the Great (540-604) once said, “God wishes to be asked, he wishes to be forced, he wishes, in a certain manner, to be overcome by our prayers.”   For the more we ask, and the more we search after and pound away at the things that matter most, if we strive after these things the more we will find ourselves being changed, the more we will find the content of our prayer changing, the dimensions of our hearts changing, the choices we make changing, the things that matter most to us changing, the things that we hope for changing. 

            Maybe this is why prayer mattered so much in Jesus’ ministry and why we all need to be schooled in it.  The fear and resistance are great because at some level we know that to take the Lord’s Prayer seriously, to take prayer seriously means at some level we will be changed, the world will be changed.  This scares us.  Yet, the more we pray this way, as Jesus’ prayed – asking, seeking, knocking – the more our lives might actually reflect the glory, the love, the justice, and the forgiveness of God. 

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[1] I’m thinking here of John Wilkinson’s best-seller, The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to a Blessed Life (Multnomah Press, 2004).  For a wide and wild sample of the variety of books on prayer available, just type in “prayer” using the search engine at Amazon.com.

[2] John Koening, Rediscovering New Testament Prayer:  Boldness and Blessing in the Name of Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 40.

[3] Dan Clendenin, Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20100719JJ.shtml

[4] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN:  The Liturgical Press, 1991), 177-178.

[5] William Wan, The Washington Post, July 29, 2009.

[6] Walter Wink quoted in Richard J. Foster, Finding the Heart’s True Home (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 247.

The One Thing Needed

Luke 10: 38-42

 16^th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 18^th July 2010

            Are you the Martha-type or the Mary-type?  Are you Martha or Mary?  I’m also talking to the guys here:  which one are you?  Martha is the doer, the organizer, the planner, the busy-one, flitting about (to use a good Scots word); she gets things done.  Martha is also the servant, the care-provider, extending hospitality and welcome, attending to the needs of others.  Mary is the opposite of Martha; she’s the contemplative, the listener, she’s casually spending her days in conversation.  The way the story is told, Jesus obviously lifts up one way of being over the other, rebuking Martha and applauding Mary.

            Now, if you’re a Martha-type, Jesus’ words can sound pretty cruel and unfair, particularly because this story follows on the heels of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that calls for sacrificial service to one’s neighbor as the way of the kingdom.  In fact, this is a theme throughout Luke’s gospel, the importance of diakonia, that is service.  It’s from this word diakonia that we get the word deacon, the one who serves (literally, a deacon is a servant who waits on tables).  Martha has just extended hospitality to the guest, to Jesus.  Shouldn’t Martha be applauded for her service?  She is sweating away in the kitchen getting the meal together.  And what is her sister doing?  She’s not helping at all, she’s extending no hospitality.  Mary’s sitting on the floor, at Jesus’ feet, listening to Jesus.  Apparently, from Martha’s perspective, Mary’s doing nothing.

            Mary is listening to Jesus when Martha comes by, obviously agitated, and tells Jesus to tell Mary to get her but off the floor and help.  This is a classic example of triangulation.  Instead of communicating directly with someone, we turn to a third person to say or do what we’re reluctant to say or do directly.  Very often a lot of interpersonal damage is done when we triangulate or find ourselves being triangulated.  Actually, Jesus allows himself to be triangulated here.  Martha approaches Jesus assuming that he would be on her side, assuming that she was in the right, doing the proper thing, the proper thing for a woman to do in his time (prepare the meal), while Mary was being neglectful of her responsibilities.  That’s when Jesus rebukes Martha.  Jesus probably wouldn’t have said anything to her had she not complained to Jesus about Mary.

            Are you Martha or Mary?   Who wants to be Martha if you’re going to be rebuked by Jesus?   Is Jesus really saying that Martha was in the wrong?  Shouldn’t we be like Martha?  Isn’t the Christian life about service to the Kingdom, serving the needs of our brothers and sisters?  Shouldn’t we be extending hospitality and welcome to everyone in God’s name?  The kingdom needs doers, planners, people who care and provide for the needs of the saints, building homes, teaching church school, visiting hospitals and care centers, caring for the homeless – and because we love to eat, we need people to make the tuna fish casseroles and Jell-O molds for potluck suppers and people to bake brownies and cookies for fellowship hour.  Where would the church be with Martha-types?         

            Where would be without Mary-types?  The reflective listener, the contemplative, the thinkers and dreamers, those willing to engage in conversation around ultimate things. 

            But we have to be careful here.  It’s not a matter of either-or, Martha or Mary, although I’ve intentionally set it up like this.  In fact, this dualist way of thinking is not helpful and leads to a misreading of the text.  It might appear to be this way, given Jesus’ rebuke of Martha.   Again, Jesus probably wouldn’t have said a thing to Martha but for her complaint of Mary.  What Martha was doing matters.  What Mary was doing also matters.    Both ways of being matter in the kingdom.

            What Jesus cautions against is not the many ways Martha is serving, but the spirit behind the way she serves.  It’s difficult to see this in the English translation, but embedded in the Greek we find a Martha who is, yes, the doer, but she’s running in ten thousand different directions at the same time; she’s being pulled and dragged away from the things that matter most.  As a result, she’s nervous, concerned, anxious, and agitated.  She’s worried.  She looks over and sees her sister calm, unbothered, without a concern in the world, talking away with Jesus.  Then she explodes, “Lord, don’t you care?”  Or, “How careless can you be?  Don’t you see what she’s doing?  She should be in the kitchen with me.  Tell her to help me.  It’s not fair.  Tell her.”  At that point I can imagine Jesus standing up, placing his arms on either side of Martha, hold her arms down, gently but firmly, calmly, looking her in the eye and saying,  “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things;  there is need of only one thing.”   Yet, implied in this statement is that Mary, not Martha, knows what it is.

            So what has Mary chosen?  What is Martha missing?  What is the better part?  What has Mary done? That’s the point of the story.

            I’ll get right to the point.  There are two themes here, both inter-related.  Both require us to remember that when Mary sits at Jesus’ feet that they are very human feet, but also the feet of God.  In other words, she’s not engaged in idle chatter with a stranger-as-guest who shows up at one’s house.  They both know who he is.  They call him, “Lord.”  If we probe a little deeper here, we see that this is really a story about hospitality or welcome:  it’s about how we receive the Lord.  How do we live in the presence of of God?  How do we welcome the Lord’s presence in our lives on a daily basis?  How do we welcome the Lord where we live – in our lives, in our households, in the life of the church?  Are we running about, flitting about, distracted, worried, anxious, busy-bodies with our to-do lists, always on the go, and thus failing to be attentive to the guest in our midst, of the Lord in our midst?  Mary recognized the nature of the guest and she throws protocol and tradition to the wind.  Jesus is more important than tradition.  Mary takes advantage of the occasion, of the visitation, sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to him.  To be like Mary is to listen to him.  To choose the better part is to choose to take the time to listen.

            Go a little deeper; Luke depicts Mary in an unconventional way for his time.  The women would have been in the kitchen or outside by the ovens cooking, while the men stayed inside to talk.  (I saw this in the Congo.  The women cooked and talked outside.  Only the men ate indoors at the table.)  But here Mary is welcomed into the world of men, as it were, and, what is more, the fact that she is listening to Jesus suggests that she is being attentive to his teaching.  Luke depicts Mary as a disciple – as a student who sits at the feet of Rabbi Jesus to learn from him.  And that’s what matters most.  Martha is missing out on this opportunity because of all her distractions – distractions that prevent here from being a student of the Lord.

            And to go deeper still – and this is easy to miss in the English – the text says, Mary “listened to what he was saying.”  This might sound like idle chatter or a generic conversation before supper, but it’s not.  The Greek is singular, ton logon – literally, the word. Mary was not listening to words, but to “the word,” as in “The Word,” with a capital “W.”  Not the Word, as in the Bible, but the Word as in, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word was with God (John 1:1).”   The same Word made flesh in Jesus; God’s Word spoken in the flesh to us.  “Word” in both the Old and New Testaments refers to the divine, creative speech of God that creates, redeems, restores, and renews creation and God’s people.  The Word is the dynamic, purposeful presence and power of God.  The Word is active; it does something, it moves us and allows us to move.  It’s the Word, the creative divine voice, that’s found in the pages of scripture; it’s the Word embedded in the sermon and released by the Holy Spirit.  When you sense God speaking through the words of the sermon, it’s not me; it’s the Word in the words at work.  It’s the Word, the creative divine speech embodied in Jesus, so that to hear his word is to hear the Word of God.  The Word of God is creative – it offers new vistas, new horizons, new ways of living and being and serving.  As Karl Barth (1886-1968) said, “The Word of God always tells us something fresh that we had never heard before from anyone.”[1]  Mary knew this, that’s what she chose and nothing will distract her from hearing the Word.

            Marys and Marthas are both needed in the kingdom, but what takes priority is being attentive to the Word of God.  Both Mary and Martha’s way of being need to be undergirded by the Word of God – the very Word Mary took time time to adore and ponder at Jesus’ feet.  She took the time to listen for the Word of God – the very Word of life that grants meaning and purpose to our lives. When the focus is on the Word of God, then everything else falls into place, then we have the energy for everything else; when the focus is not on the Word – on God’s vision, God’s purpose – we might be busy and productive, but toward what end, for what purpose? 

            My friend, Tom Long, teaches at Emory University and tells the story of years ago being part of an advisory group to the chaplains at a major university.  Their job was to meet, to listen to reports from the chaplains about their work, and to offer support and counsel.  At one point they were asking questions of the chaplains.  One member of the group, an older gentleman, asked, “What are the university students like morally these days?”  The chaplains looked at each other, wondering how to answer that question.  Finally, one of them took a stab at it.  “Well,” she said, “I think you’d be basically pleased.  The students are pretty ambitious in terms of their careers, but that’s not all they are. A lot of them tutor kids after school. Some work in a night shelter and in a soup kitchen for the homeless.  Last week a group of students protested apartheid in South Africa…” As she talked, the Jewish chaplain who was listening to her began to grin.  The more she talked, the bigger he grinned, until finally it became distracting.  “Am I saying something funny?” she said to the Jewish chaplain.  “No, no, I’m sorry,” he replied.  “I was just sitting here thinking.  You are saying that the university students are good people, and you’re right.  And you’re saying that they are involved in good social causes, and they are.  But what I was thinking is that the one thing they lack is a vision of salvation.”  They all looked in shock at the Jewish chaplain.  “No, it’s true,” he said.  “If you do not have some vision of what God is doing to repair the whole creation, you can’t get up every day and work in a soup kitchen.  It finally beats you down.”[2]

            Without that vision of God’s salvation, without a grounding in God’s Word, it’s easy for us to become anxious, frenetic, distracted Marthas, going about our business and busy-ness, getting things done, but frustrated and maybe even resentful of others and not taking delight and joy in the work before us.  It’s so easy in our lives to be go, go, go, and forget the reason why we go, go, go.  It’s so easy in the church to get caught up in all the activity, with our committee meetings filled with motions and minutes, but missing the Spirit, missing the joy and passion.  It’s so easy for church folk to get burned out.  Sometimes that’s caused by the circumstances in the church; other times it’s because the work has become an end in itself, the work has become divorced from the worship. That is, we have forgotten why we do what we do and for whom. 

            Mary knew what mattered most – hearing the Word, being attentive to the presence of Christ, drawing upon his love and grace and then in love being graceful to a world in need.  If you don’t have some vision of what God is doing, it finally beats you down and burns you up.  Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to his Word, listens to his vision.  Without that Word we won’t last long in the Martha-like work required of us in the kingdom.  “It will finally worry us, distract us, anger us, exhaust us, and beat us down.  With that Word, though, we can prepare meals for the hungry, care tenderly for the sick, show hospitality to the stranger and keep on loving and living in the name of Christ.”[3]

            The one thing needed is the Word of Jesus who continues to speak to us all the time.  Although we often fail to hear because of our distractions; our distractions hinder us from listening.  But to listen to his Word – that’s the better part, the good part, the best part that once received can never be taken away.  The one thing needed is the Word, the Word of Jesus, whose word to us is the very Word of Life.

           

---

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.5.ii (Edinburgh:  T & T Clark, 1975), 133.

[2] Thomas G. Long, “Mary and Martha,” sermon online at http://day1.org/1052-mary_and_martha.print.

[3] Thomas G. Long, “Mary and Martha.”

Facing our Liberation

Luke 8: 26-39

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 13th June 2010


The Roman Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) was troubled by all the interruptions in his day which kept him from doing ministry. That is until one day he realized that the interruptions were his ministry. One afternoon, several years ago, I was busy working in my study in the Church House, trying to do a dozen things all at once before rushing out of the office to attend presbytery, when Shirley Winters called and said someone was here to see me.

I didn’t know Jason, but he needed to talk. (1) I invited him upstairs to my study, sat down, focused, and then listened. Jason said he was very troubled, anxious, worried. He told me that he suffered from mental illness and lived in a group home. His former wife also worked there and it seems she was preoccupied with the occult – Ouiji boards, tarot cards, witchcraft. He told me of his love for Jesus and it disturbed him to see her going down this path. She was influencing others in the home and Jason was worried. I asked him if he talked with the director and he said no because he was afraid word would get back to his ex-wife and then she might put a curse on him or something. I listened carefully and took his concerns seriously because he did. Then we talked about Jesus. We remembered how Jesus is more powerful than any other force in this universe. In Jesus we’re safe. His ex-wife could do him no harm. He was praying a lot and I encouraged him to continue to pray. And we prayed together. Then Jason went on his way, feeling a little better (I hope).

It was all a little surreal, to be honest. That was a first in my ministry. Jason comes to mind when I hear this text, the story of the Gerasene demoniac. Now I’m not saying Jason was not in his right mind. And I’m not saying he was some kind of modern-day demoniac or that his ex-wife was. In our text, Jesus exorcises demonic spirits from out of this poor, troubled soul. However, this text is not a training manual on how to deal with demons or perform exorcisms. I remember one day, when I was serving the Mendham church in New Jersey, I received a phone call from a neighbor who just moved into an old house next to the church (beside the church’s cemetery) and discovered that it was haunted. Her teenage daughter freaked out and didn’t want to live there. She wanted to know if I would do an exorcism. I said, “Wrong department. You need to call my friend Father Lasch at St. Joseph’s. Let me give you his number. Presbyterians don’t know anything about this. He’ll know what to do!”

Both Jason’s situation and that of the demoniac in Luke have to do with power. Stories of exorcism in the New Testament are about power. Who is in control? Jesus comes and asserts his authority over every other authority in the world. When Jesus conducts exorcisms he is making a statement about power – God’s power. It’s a statement about who is in control. Jesus comes and gently, yet forcefully, demands that every influence of power yield to the redeeming power of Yahweh. And Jesus as Savior asserts his power because he knows there are other, lesser powers in the world which were and even now oppressing God’s people. Under the pressure of these forces people are diminished and debased, forces that try to steal our humanity away, which dehumanize and make us into animals, forces that dismantle our identities and take us very far away from the truth about ourselves. There are forces out there which make us sick, which make us violent, which make us self-destructive, full of self-hatred and self-loathing. There are forces in the world which can make us crazy, which disturb and disrupt our sense of well-being. And then when the forces have done their worst to us, we take all that anger, that violence, that self-hatred and project it out upon a world in outward destructive acts that only mirror the chaos of the mind, of the self. This is what happens when people are dehumanized. When we are dehumanized, we dehumanize others.

This account of the Gerasene demoniac is one of my favorite stories in the New Testament because it is so rich and profound and opens up new vistas regarding the power and purpose of God’s love and redemption. This is one of the most concrete demonstrations of the gospel for me: this is what Jesus came to do and continues to do in the lives of his people. He brings liberation. As contemporary theologian James Alison put it, “Jesus empowered the demoniac to become a human being, sitting, clothed and in his right mind, going home to his friends.” (2) This is what the gospel is about – freeing us to be human, to be ourselves, to be authentic, so that our lives might give glory to God. One of my favorite quotes, one that shapes my life, is a statement by Irenaeus’ (c. 115-190), who claimed, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” God is glorified, is praised when the human person is fully alive! Or, to put it a different way, one of the best ways we can worship God is to do whatever it takes to come more fully alive. The great theologian and ethicist of the last century, Paul Lehmann (1904-1994), said that God’s work in Jesus is to restore humanity back to human life. I believe the Holy Spirit takes up this work and invites all of us to join in “keeping human life human.” (3) That’s what Jesus came to do for us and continues to do with us.

But in order to come to life, we need to become aware of those powers that seek to take away our life, forces that try to dehumanize us, which can make us sick, which disturb and destroy us.

But from what is the Gerasene liberated? That’s the question. To talk of “forces” might sound antiquated to our ears, but if we think we’re not being shaped by all kinds of forces in our lives, then we’re being deceived. To talk of demons is simply an antiquated way of talking about someone who is mentally ill or socially unfit to function in society. We might say he’s mentally ill. Maybe. Maybe this text is good news for the mentally ill. But, if this is a text about mental illness (and I’m not sure it is), Jesus is also asking a deeper question: What makes one sick? Not all mental illness has biological origins. Sometimes it is caused by terrible trauma to the psyche. Sometimes it is life itself that sends us over the top and reality starts to crack. So how do we relate to this story? I think it’s easy to take this text and say, “Well, I’m not mentally disturbed like this guy, therefore it’s not about me.” Generally speaking, we probably find it difficult to identify with this man. He’s not like us. We’re socially well-adjusted, secure, with family and friends, and a roof over our heads. We’re not living in the cemetery. Sure life is tough, but our lives are nothing like his. We’re not sick. We’re in control of our lives. There’s nothing or no one oppressing us.

To which Jesus replies, “Oh really?” The problem is very often we’re not even aware of those powers that continually try to dehumanize us. The powers are legion or many. I want to lift up three powers we find in the text.

I.
Jesus the liberator comes to free us from sick religion. Even though Jesus is now in a Gentile community here, in the land of the Gerasenes or Gerasa, he is still making a strong statement about the nature of religion. According to the complexities of Jewish law at this time, the person demon possessed was considered ritually unclean and was set apart from the community. This man lived among the tombs. He was “dead” – the living dead. He was unacceptable through and through because he lived in a place that was unclean, impure. Judaism at this time had an obsessive dread of dead bodies. After touching a dead body one had to be purified. This man was surrounded by death and no one could release him without being made unclean. It is striking that Jesus completely defies all the rules, ignores the purity codes, and goes right to the heart of this person lost in death. Although this is in a Gentile country, the Jewish reader hearing this story would have been astonished, shocked, and maybe even offended that Jesus would act in such ungodly way.

Now I’m not saying Judaism is sick or causes one to be sick. But all religions, including Christianity, have the capacity to exchange grace for legalisms. Instead of freeing people, all religions can become toxic, destructive. But Jesus, having no regard for religious platitudes and false morality goes right to this man and faces him, sees him as a child of God and addresses his needs and heals him and reclaims his humanity.

II.
Jesus the liberator comes to free us from sick politics. For centuries Christians have tried to depoliticized the gospel and divorce it from the rest of our public life. We often hear that religion and politics don’t mix. You may even believe this. But no biblical writer ever believed that. Jesus never separated religion from politics because both have to do with power and Jesus was concerned for people burdened by the destructive influence of abusive power. It is absolutely clear that Jesus did not think this way – and he never said that. He cleverly said, “Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and render unto God what belongs to God (Matthew 22:21).” But the point of that statement is that nothing belongs to Caesar and everything belongs to God! Bad politics, bad government, oppressive states make people sick – they dehumanize and destroy. Political structures can serve the common good. In fact, John Calvin (1509-1564) believed political forces must serve the needs of the common good. But we must always be leery as Christians for signs when political powers are being abused and people are suffering.

A very strong case can be made that in this text the fundamental demon that needs to be exorcised from the minds of the people – both Jewish and Gentile – are the legions of Roman troops brutally occupying Israel. Our clue here is the name of the demon, Legion – a legion is 6,000 Roman troops. It’s the only meaning of the word at that time. The Romans were brutal, ruthless towards the people of this region. They defiled the temple in Jerusalem. They murdered people in the temple. Jerusalem was full of violent protests. The countryside was full of communities of resistance who used every opportunity to attack and kill the Roman soldiers. The greater the resistance, meant the greater the abuse. The oppression was killing the people. The people of this region were forced to worship Caesar as greater than Yahweh, were forced to pay tribute to the emperor through grain offerings and others goods. People were heavily taxed. This is political-economic oppression that always dehumanizes people. (4) The reign of terror was so bad that some, no doubt, lost their minds. I wonder what the demoniac witnessed. What kind of brutality did he have to endure? This is not God’s will and so Jesus comes to give us our minds back – he gives us our minds back. He gives us our lives back. But once healed, where does one then live?

III.
Jesus the liberator comes to free us from sick communities and relationships. Sociologists have identified the way some communities and families create scapegoats. (5) Often communities and families take all their anxieties, all their worries, all their dysfunction, their shadows, all their fears and place them on particular people in the community or a person in the family and then these people act out, usually self-destructively, what they see going on all around them. To what extent was this “sick” man infected by the sickness of the community? They needed him in his place. They needed him to be sick. If he remained sick, they could define themselves as healthy, “normal,” sane (when they probably weren’t). We can feel better when it is the other person who is worse off. All communities and families have the potential to make us all a little sick. There is no such thing a perfectly healthy community or family or church. There are varying degrees of health. But there are toxic communities, toxic families, toxic churches from which individuals need to be freed.

Jesus heals this man, releases him from his demons. But then what happens? The townsfolk are horrified and scared. Jesus is over-turning the way they have structured their lives and they don’t appreciate it. They see the man healed, and they become afraid. They get mad. The owner of the pigs was probably not too happy, either! Then they want Jesus to leave – sick societies don’t want health. They might say that they do, but they don’t. They don’t want the presence of the healer because he reminds them of their disease. The resistance to transformation, to healing in our lives is usually enormous, powerful. It’s a power which needs to be redeemed by the liberating word of Christ. Yet, they want Jesus to leave and the demoniac wants to go with him. He doesn’t want to go back to those sick people! Can you blame him? Jesus tells him to go back to his family and friends. What family? What friends? This almost sounds cruel. He wants to go with Jesus because he’s afraid of going back to them.

But the gospel calls him to be himself, a human being, in his right mind, clothed, sane, healthy – this is what the New Testament calls being saved – out there in the midst of the sick people who are not healed yet. The gospel grants reconciliation in the midst of alienation. That’s what we’re called to do. Go and tell the people how God has been merciful to you. Freed from the destructive forces of sick religion, political oppression, and toxic communities, he is free to be himself in a world that resists, despises, and fears his very existence. This is the gospel of the kingdom. This is what kingdom living looks like.

This is the kind of power that Jesus yields. This is the power of the Living God who will do whatever it takes to free us from everything that tarnishes or seeks to remove the image of God in us. This is what happens when we face our liberator. Or more correctly, when we’re not looking for it, this is what happens when a small boat carrying our Lord sails up on the shore of our lives, faces us and asks, “What is your name?”

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Sources:
1. Jason is not his real name.
2. James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, pp. 131-133. Alison’s reading is based on the work of René Girard in “The Demons of Gerasa,” The Scapegoat found on the Girardian Reflections on the Commentary website.
3. Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 99. See also Nancy J. Duff, Humanization and the Politics of God: The Koinonia Ethics of Paul Lehmann (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992). This idea of humanization was central to his theological ethics.
4. See Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 15ff.
5. The term scapegoat or pharmakos has its origin in Greek tragedy. Tragedy literally means “goat song,” or it can be translated “scapegoat song.” Terry Eagleton writes: “The pharmakos is symbolically loaded with the guilt of the community, which is why it is selected from among the lowest of the low. It is then thrust out into the wilderness, the symbol of traumatic horror which we dare not contemplate. … In the figure of the scapegoat, the borders between power and weakness, sacred and profane, central and peripheral, sickness and health, poison and cure, are accordingly blurred. …The scapegoat incarnates dirt, deformity, madness and criminality, and rather like the insane of classical antiquity, it is both shunned and regarded with respectful awe. This unclean thing is a substitute for the acts of a displacement for their sins…. In burdening it with their guilt, the people at once acknowledge their frailty and disavow it, project it violently outside themselves in the slaying of the sacrificial victim or its expulsion beyond their political frontiers.” Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 277-279.

Winds of Change: In Us

Acts 1:3, 6-9 & Romans 8: 12-18

Pentecost/ 23rd May 2010

Winds of Change. The last two weeks we looked at the winds of change blowing through the world and the church. We identified some of the ways the Holy Spirit might be at work extending the presence of Christ in our time, reforming the church and the world. On this Pentecost Sunday we turn personal. We’ve looked outward the last two weeks, this week we turn inward to reflect upon the winds of change blowing in us because of the Spirit of the Risen Christ. Yes, the Spirit is in the world and in the church, but the Spirit also abides deep within us, closer than our breath. Perhaps when we’re more attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit in the depths of our spirits, when we care for and cultivate this primary relationship, we might be better equipped to face all the changes and demands facing the church and the world today.

Romans 8: 12-18 is a good guide here. Although the opening verses of the text, where Paul talks about being debtors of the flesh and putting to death the “deeds of the body,” might sound confusing, if not Puritanical. When Paul refers to “flesh” he doesn’t mean our physical body; it’s his term for our natural existence, or human existence apart from God. Human existence divorced from God means to be of the flesh. Flesh is placed in contrast to Spirit, because the Spirit is the one who turns our natural lives, bound by sin and alienation from God, and transforms them into something new, lives that participate in the Spirit of Christ. Then we might come to see ourselves, “led by the Spirit of God” and thus God’s children. That’s the point here: it’s about change, transformation from one way of being to another, it’s about conversion —not once, but over and over and over again as the Spirit pulls us into the life of God.

He continues, “For you did not receive [from Christ] a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.” That is, in Christ we have been, and are, and ever more are being grafted into the life of God, adopted by God and called into God’s life. This is because, as the cross and resurrection made abundantly clear, God desires to be close to us and our heart’s deepest desire is to be close to God. It’s this connection between God and humanity and humanity and God that stands at the heart of the gospel. It’s why Paul wanted the Romans to know, as we find in the culmination of this sublime, majestic chapter eight, that, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, …nor powers, nor height, or depth, nor anything in all of creation, will be able to separate us form the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8: 38-39).” It’s the connection that matters, so that knowing in Christ we are very close to God we are able to cry out, “Abba! Father!” Abba means, “Daddy.” It’s a term of endearment, of intimacy – so intimate in fact that our human spirits can cry out to the Spirit of God. Indeed, as Paul suggests, it’s the Spirit who allows us to become like children again in the presence of God, crying out, trusting, and praising God. That’s what the Holy Spirit does.

While we have been playing around with the winds of change metaphor we have to remember that all metaphors breakdown, that is, they’re all inadequate. One of the weaknesses of the wind metaphor for the Holy Spirit is that it’s far too impersonal. The Holy Spirit is not a force; the Holy Spirit is not an “it.” When Jesus and Paul talk about the Holy Spirit, they describe a person, with characteristics and functions, who comes either alongside us or dwells within us in order to relate to us – face-to-face, the personhood of God to our personhood. You see, the Holy Spirit is God, the Holy Spirit is the personal agent of God’s relationship with us who not only draws us into a deeper relationship with Christ, but who then in and through our ongoing relationship with Christ changes us. That’s what happens when we face Christ; we’re changed and never left the same again. We’re changed, again and again, when the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit, our souls, our hearts, the depths of our being, the core of who we are and tells us who we are; and from the depth of those places we live out a profound relationship with Christ. To be baptized means that the Holy Spirit is at work in us, participating in us as, we participate in Christ. Christ is not some distant historical figure that we believe in; he’s a present historical presence who deals with us personally.(1)

While in God’s grace we’re accepted where we are, God never leaves us there, but takes us to somewhere else. Part of that journey treks out over the landscape of the human spirit. Listening to the voice of the Spirit to get direction includes listening within. Part of that journey includes discovering who God is and who we are – seeing ourselves as God’s children. Part of the journey is done through our relationships, with this community of faith, with our families. But the journey has to also take place within.

In the depths of the relationship we discover that God is ever seeking us as we are ever seeking God, driven by love. The Spirit through the depths of our spirits seeks to draw us deeper and deeper into relationship with God (which is what Jesus came to do). And in the relationship, through this love, we are indeed changed, transformed. For in love and through love Christ wishes to change us – not to make us into something we’re not, but wants us to see ourselves as the people he already knows us to be, that we might see something of what God sees; that we might be more authentic and real and honest about who we are as God’s own, that we might be more loving and just and forgiving and hopeful, that we might have the heart of God.

Life in the Spirit is about transformation – of deepening our capacity to love and to be loved. In love the Spirit is forever trying to nudge us or kick us out of ego-zones, that we might discover God in the other, that we might discover empathy. The Spirit pushes us to do things that we resist because of fear. The Spirit, in love, calls us to listen to the depths of our souls to give up living on the surface and challenges us to go deep. In love, the Spirit prays for us, companions us, walks beside us, like a friend, and takes us where we need to go – not where we necessarily want to go, but need to go to do God’s will. In love the Spirit gives us an experience of God – the reality of God, the mystery and wonder of God – and that’s what matters most in the church and the world. In love the Spirit helps us to remember who we are and whose we are and connects us with the Source of our Being.

Our confirmands this morning began their journey with a quote from Lewis Carroll’s, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland (1865): “Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!” Who in the world am I? Who in the world are you? That’s the great puzzle, whether one is 14, 44, or 84. Yet, we don’t solve the puzzle alone. This is what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. God knows who we are. The Spirit reminds us time and again, who we are and whose we are. Who in the world am I? Who are you? With the confirmands we can say, with the Apostle Paul we can say what Jesus came to show us once and for all: we are children of God. We are children of God!

_____________
Sources:

Image: “Pentecost,” by online digital/fractal artist known as Jacqui “Purple Whirlpool.”

1. Cf. the quotation from the worship bulletin: “The personality of the Spirit is important for faith… because… in the Spirit meets us and deals with us personally. Without the personal work of the Spirit we could have Christ only as an impersonal memory. It is the living person of God, present in his Spirit, that unites us with Christ and through him deals personally with us.” George S. Hendry, The Holy Spirit in Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 42.